Damn it...Damn it…Damn it...Double dog damn it...I had one rule. One single rule that could be said to actually count for anything in my moral core.

One single rule I’d said I’d never break and then I went and broke it. What the actual hell was I thinking?

As I ran into a closet, then out of a back alley, then into a sewer and then into a yawning cavern and then into another closet, I couldn’t help thinking that this was “exactly” what should happen. This is what when one gets when one goes and does the only thing that can truly be considered “black” in a world of moral grays.

I did what I had to, to save the neighbor girl. I regretted it almost immediately. I regretted it as I took off her top. I regretted it as I undid her bra. I regretted it as I tore open her torso and stuck my hand in her chest.

If there is anyone in the universe willing to listen, I Samhain...formerly Dudley *Erp* Walkins….formerly Desmond Bose, am Sorry. I did a very bad thing and I am deeply, deeply sorry.

As should probably be guessed, as someone whose future-self had come back to the past to stuff them chockful of extra powers and skills, I had the luxury of having favorites and unfavorites amongst my abilities.

My favorite abilities were TPO and my Cosmic Travelers Privilege and whatever their current incarnations were. I liked being able to get around to whenever I wanted to be and needed to be. I also liked not having to interact with people unless there was a definite need for it.

My least favorite abilities had been Ambrosial Tongue, Vox Empyrean and whatever their current incarnation was.

Sure, you could argue that they were my most game breakingly powerful abilities, but I didn’t much appreciate having to watch every word I said and every thought I had to keep from unmaking myself and everything around me.

Most of all I hated the fact that it was almost stupidly easy for me to brainwash people. You couldn’t even call what I did brainwashing, really. It was more an erosion of will and self.

Given enough time and energy, which I think I’ve already established, I hold in near limitless supply, if I wanted to I could use my will and thoughts to grind down the will and thoughts of others. I could make anyone do, feel, think, say absolutely anything I wanted. I could even invade people’s souls.

If that sounds impressive it’s probably because it is. All my powers are impressive...I’m a living cheat remember?

If that sounds terrible that’s also probably because it is. What I’ve just stated is something along the lines of announcing that I have the ability to easily capture, malign, and abuse all the world’s puppies or to eat all the world’s children. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s something that I pretty much never, ever wanted to use.

A tool I was content to leave in the tool box.

Whether it was life with the cult, or life living under my abusive father, or my time with the shittier of the shrinks that state appointed to me, I knew how bad it was to have someone in your head. Trying to make you feel things you don’t want to feel. Trying to make you think things you don’t want to think. Muddling with your inner reality till you couldn’t know what was what anymore.

But then, two days ago came, and the girl was dying and the only way to save her was to go tinkering in her soul, because that’s what was wrong with her. Her soul. There was something attached to it. A growth. Something that was bubbling up from within her.

The aberration of her metaphysical-self wreaking havoc on her physical form. I probably should have left it alone. Or rather forget the probably, I “definitely” should have left it alone. But I didn’t. I didn’t want her to die.

So I touched what should never be touched and reached inside her with glitter, black, white and gray scalpel and scissors. Snip, snip, snipping away at her inner-most being to remove the abnormality.

At the very least I can say I got something, that could roughly be called her consent first, talking directly to her mind before I went ahead and did the procedure. But even then, I can’t know for sure if I was talking to all of her. Even the archive doesn’t know.

To speak to the parts of her that were sane and lucid I had to put the parts that had gone insane with pain to sleep. And who knows...maybe those were the important parts. Maybe I’d locked down key portions of her mind and personality that were instrumental to whether the her I was speaking to was the real her.

I honestly don’t know and again neither does the archive.

What I do know is that after getting her permission and cutting out the abnormal growth. I almost immediately had to run out of there. I’d just barely closed the girl up again sealing the surgical site and setting up and iv of healing serum, before “they” appeared.

Now I was running, teleporting from dead city to dead city, from continent to continent. Chased by an army that made all my future-self’s efforts seem meaningless and small. And honestly I can’t say I didn’t deserve this. Even if, when,..”they” got me in the end, this would all still be my own fault.